Cincinnati’s Gold Rush Coins, Steeped In Mystery, Are Worth A Fortune Today

Little is known about the coin minters from Cincinnati who took the long journey to the California gold mines.
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Although Cincinnati’s name appears prominently on this 1849 gold piece preserved at the Smithsonian Institution, it remains a mystery exactly where and when the coin was minted.

From the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution

Among the most sought after and valuable coins in the world are a handful struck for the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company during the California Gold Rush of 1849.

Despite the exorbitant value of these rare coins, we know next to nothing about the company that minted them or the men who organized the Cincinnati company. We don’t know where these coins were minted or why. Perhaps because of the mystery, the Cincinnati coins change hands for sums up to a million dollars – when they rarely emerge on the market.

According to coin dealer Joseph O’Connor, only a single Cincinnati five-dollar gold piece is known. It resides in the National Numismatic Collection of the Smithsonian Institution. There are only seven recorded gold Cincinnati ten-dollar pieces, two of which are held by the Smithsonian. A lone twenty-dollar coin from this company is known. It’s at the Philadelphia Mint, and it was struck from copper, not gold, deepening the mystery.

The most complete history of the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company may be found in a 1913 book by Edgar H. Adams, “Private Gold Coinage of California 1849-55: Its History and Its Issues.” According to Adams, although the coins bear the legend “Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company,” the official name of the firm was “California Mining and Trading Company of Cincinnati, Ohio.”

The by-laws of the company were printed in Cincinnati in 1849 by the Model Western Printing House, a company that appears not to be found in any city directory or contemporary newspaper. That document is preserved in the library of Yale University.

Adams provides a full list of the fifty or so stockholders in the company, copied from the New York Tribune of 17 March 1849. According to that roster, the president was J.H. Leavering, vice-president W.B. Norman, treasurer David Kinsey, secretary Sam T. Jones, bookkeeper A.H. Colton, and a “board of finance” consisted of Joseph Talbert, G. W. Letter and L. M. Rogers. Scant clues from Cincinnati records suggest these officers were solidly middle-class: teachers, lawyers, wholesalers, grocers. Amos Gove was a bookkeeper in his uncle’s Cincinnati market.

Among the stockholders were a couple of Nixons, maybe brothers, who might have been connected with a Cincinnati paper manufactory. In his 1981 book, “Private Gold Coins and Patterns of the United States” (1981), Don Kagin hypothesizes that the dies used to strike the Cincinnati coins originated at the Nixon paper company:

“There can be some intelligent speculation as to who made the dies for the Cincinnati Company. Nixon and Co. were paper manufacturers in Cincinnati on Walnut Street below Pearl and employed engravers on steel to create the designs for wallpaper. H. Johnson and W. Johnson of Cincinnati later engraved dies for the token cents which widely circulated during the Civil War. Since A. B. Nixon, J. Johnson, and A. Johnson were members of the Cincinnati party going to California, it is probable that the Cincinnati Company coining dies were prepared by the Johnsons in Nixon’s paper mill.”

It remains a mystery where the coins were minted. Were they struck in Cincinnati as sample designs? Were they struck in California by the Cincinnati company after they arrived? Or did the Cincinnati company sell or give its dies to another company, who then struck the coins in California?

We know the Cincinnati company headed westward hauling a machine for striking coins because the diary of one of Doctor Alexander Butler Nixon is preserved at the California State Library in Sacramento. According to that diary, the Cincinnati company ironically realized, once they were on the dusty trail, that they were too well equipped. John Phillip Reid, in a 1976 article for the Hastings Law Journal, described the dilemma:

“Before reaching Fort Kearney in Nebraska the members of the Cincinnati company had discovered that their wealth was not a source of strength. It was instead a source of disharmony, dissension, and division.”

Nixon relates that, after much debate, the company compromised. They agreed not to haul the heavy coining machine in their own wagons but sent it ahead with another wagon train. Interestingly, Nixon – the company’s medical doctor – noted that other supplies were abandoned as well:

“Our Brandy was taken along for medicinal purposes, the company being organized under the titotal abstinence principle, but that Brandy was a very popular preventive and of course was all used medicinally.”

Despite the logistical hurdles, it appears that the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company did arrive some months later in California. Alexander Nixon and Amos Gove, at least, survived long enough to be designated as California Pioneers in the 1870s. The documentation required for this honor raises even more questions. Gove wrote a long letter to his Cincinnati family from a point halfway through Nebraska on May 17, 1849. His California Pioneer file indicates he arrived in California on July 6, 1849 – but claims he arrived by ship, which would have required many more months of travel.

What happened after the Cincinnati Mining & Trading Company arrived in California also remains a mystery. The Alta California newspaper of 15 November 1851 records a “Cincinnati Company” operating a mine in Calaveras or Tuolumne County, but none of the names associated with this operation match any of the stockholders listed in 1849.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of young men raced from Cincinnati to California on the news gold had been discovered. Many found nothing but heartbreak. A few helped build a new state.

From Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1860, Vol XX No CXIX

Edgar H. Adams devoted an entire book to the private mints that operated in California before the U.S. government got involved in producing coinage late in 1850. Until the feds muscled in, private specie was the basis for commerce in the gold field. Adams does not believe the Cincinnati coins ever made it into circulation:

“Almarin B. Paul, of San Francisco, who conducted an extensive business in Sacramento in 1849 and 1850, and through whose hands passed many of the private issues, states that neither he nor any of the pioneers with whom he had consulted, remember seeing this Company’s coins in circulation. It is very likely that those known were simply trial pieces, struck in gold, and that for some reason the Company which contemplated their issue abandoned the plan.”

Circulated or not, it has been suggested that so few coins exist because the company’s dies were faulty. Surviving coins show cracks on the reverse side, indicating that a few more strikes would have fractured the die.

At least the Cincinnati company was mostly honest. Coins struck by other private mints were criminally debased. Some private ten-dollar pieces contained less than $8.00 in gold. The Cincinnati coins, on the other hand, averaged about $9.70 in actual gold.

You may be inspired to take another look at those odd coins you shoved to the back of your sock drawer, but beware. Numismatic expert Mike Locke reports that a company called Martguild makes brass or gold-plated cast-zinc replicas of rare and expensive coins. These reproductions are extremely common and have very little value. Other large pioneer gold coins have been similarly reproduced, but the Cincinnati company’s coins seem to be one of the most common. The reproductions often misspell “trading” as “tracing” or have a “T” standing for “token” stamped on them.

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